American Dreams | Book 1 | The Decline

by Parker, Brian

  “Um, okay.”

  Cassandra went back to reading her book, so I navigated my cell phone’s browser to Amazon and typed in the name of the book. I tried several variations of the spelling of the word “Fahrenheit” since it wasn’t really one that I used often. Finally, I got frustrated and went to Google, typing in the word until it came up. I copy/pasted the correct spelling into Amazon and still nothing came up.

  “What the?”

  “What’s wrong?” Cassandra asked without looking up from her phone.

  “I can’t find the book.”

  “Fahrenheit is a hard word to spell. Maybe you’re not typing it right.”

  “I tried that. It’s just not there.”

  “Hmm. It must be out of print or something then,” she offered, glancing quickly at me. She smiled, then frowned. “Sorry.”

  “Not your fault,” I mumbled. “I just didn’t think things, you know, went out of print in the digital age.”

  She went back to her book, so I navigated to my e-reader app. Looked like I’d end up rereading 1984 after all. I scrolled through my library and came up empty.

  “What the hell?”

  “What now?” Cassandra asked.

  “Um…” I scrolled some more. “A bunch of my books are missing.”

  “Huh?”

  “A bunch of the books I’ve bought are missing from my reading app.”

  “Hmm… Maybe close down the app and restart?” she suggested.

  “I did that already.”

  “Then turn your phone off all the way and turn it back on. Maybe there was an update that didn’t finish or something.”

  I turned off my phone and waited ten seconds, then powered it back on. It went through the startup sequence for several seconds and I was prompted for my facial recognition. Once I’d gone through that, I went back to the app and my books still weren’t there. A feeling of foreboding began to creep up my spine. I couldn’t find Fahrenheit 451 in the book store…

  I went to the internet and did a quick search. I couldn’t find the books anywhere. I did find several more conspiracy websites that talked about the suppression and removal of most dystopian books that were anti-government or cautionary tales about government overreach. The websites said it was another step toward a totalitarian regime, but several of them stated that they owned paperback copies and promised to upload digital pages in the next few weeks.

  I reopened my e-reader app. Sure enough, both 1984 and Animal Farm were missing. But it seemed like there were more books missing than just those two. I couldn’t quite put a finger on it. I didn’t remember any other anti-establishment books in my library… Then it hit me. I searched for titles by a group of Conservative authors that I’d followed for years on social media. All of their books were gone. And others that had been like-minded, ones who advocated self-sufficiency, owning guns, and protecting the US Constitution. All gone.

  I switched over to the web and looked up the group’s website. I got an error message saying it didn’t exist. Double-checking the website address, it looked right, but I was going from memory since I didn’t have it. I tried another tactic. The authors showed up in Google searches, but they were all cached sites and the links led to nowhere.

  “Busy little fuckers,” I mumbled.

  “Did you find it?” Cassandra asked, face still peering intently at her screen.

  “No. The exact opposite.” I gave her a two-minute rundown of what I’d been doing in the past half an hour.

  “No way.” She bookmarked her page and hopped into her own library. I’d convinced her to buy her own copies of a lot of those guys’ books in the hopes that she’d read them and get into the post-apocalyptic genre because she didn’t like it and refused to watch movies about that sort of thing, which meant I had to watch them on my laptop most of the time while she used the television for whatever bullshit reality show train wreck was popular right now. That sucked.

  “Huh.”

  “Are they missing from yours too?”

  “Yeah. I mean, I never read them. Never even opened them. Do they disappear after you don’t read them for so long?”

  “No,” I replied. “They’re suppressing dissenting voices. They don’t want people to think beyond what the government tells them to think.”

  “They who?”

  “The…” I threw up my hands in frustration. “I don’t know who. But it’s happening all over, not just in Austin, not even just in America. There are people on these message boards from Europe. They say the same stuff is happening over there—granted, they had a lot less of a fall than we’re going to have if this keeps going because of the systematic loss of rights they’d endured for forty years, but there are still goon squads roaming the streets. It’s like the Russians and the Nazis had an ugly baby and it’s in charge of the world.”

  “How is that possible? Don’t you think you’re reading a little too much into this, babe?” She threw a hand to her mouth and held out the other one, palm facing me. “I’m sorry. I know what you went through today. I’m not saying—”

  I took her hand and pulled it down to the blanket. Intertwining my fingers with hers, I said, “It’s okay. I know you’re not.”

  “I saw something that a friend posted the other day that said her social media posts were being censored because of her political beliefs and something about a ‘shadow ban’ on her business page, but I didn’t think anything about it. You know Sarah. She’s about as far-right wing looney as you can get. She always thinks somebody is trying to take her guns or the ability to,” she pointed at my phone, “read whatever she wants.”

  “Something’s happening here.”

  “But what it is ain’t exactly clear?” Cassandra sang, making me laugh. For What It’s Worth by Buffalo Springfield was one of our favorite songs together, even though it was recorded decades before either of us were born.

  “Well, yeah,” I replied after I regained my composure. “We’re clearly seeing the beginning of a police state or something.”

  “The entire world? That’s like—come on, man, that’s like crazy time. You go talking like that, maybe you and Sarah should start hooking up instead of us.”

  I shrugged, allowing her fingers to slip away. I knew she wasn’t serious. “I don’t know about the whole world, but definitely people are saying it’s in Europe.”

  “How? Why? Why would anyone want to do this during a global pandemic?”

  “What if there isn’t a global pandemic?” I asked.

  “What?”

  “This is extreme crazy-land stuff, but I did read it on a couple of sites—probably dudes sitting in their mom’s basement living off of Mountain Dew and Doritos, so take it for what it’s worth… But.” I held up a finger. “What if there was a grain of truth to it?”

  “Okay.” Cassandra set her phone down on the nightstand. “You need to elaborate for me because I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “I don’t believe it,” I said as a way of introducing the topic, “but what if there was even a kernel of truth to it?”

  “To what, that the virus isn’t real? I’m so confused.”

  “Yeah, sorry.”

  “Words, Bodhi. Use your words.” She had to tell me that all the time because I’d get lost in trying to overthink something without actually saying it during a conversation.

  “Okay, so the H5N8 is obviously real. But what if it isn’t as deadly as the media and the government claims it is?”

  “There have been a lot of body bags and people saying they have friends and relatives who’ve died of it,” Cassandra countered.

  “Sure, but what if causes of death are being misreported by hospitals?”

  “Why would they do that? I’m not following.”

  “Because of the economic stimulus money attached to the Crud. So, if a hospital reports a death as occurring because of H5N8, they get a twenty-five thousand dollar stipend for each one to assist with the PPE and sanitation measures. Th
ousands of people die every day—probably a lot more than that. What if people who are dying of other things are being attributed to the Crud? That would certainly change the face of this pandemic. It’s a known fact that the hospitals are putting the wrong information on death certificates to get more money.”

  “Known by whom?”

  I hated when she used “whom” in a sentence. It was so proper. “By…by everyone!” I blurted out. “I don’t know. There’ve been a bunch of reported cases of that.”

  “Reported by whom? And on what platform? Social media? That’s a dumpster fire. Has the legitimate media reported anything like that?”

  “Don’t get me started on the ‘legitimate media,’” I answered, making air quotes with my fingers.

  “Okay, fine. Stay on topic then. Hospitals get paid when somebody dies from the Crud.”

  “Yeah. A lot. So, the more deaths occurring from the Crud, the more money the hospitals make. The higher the report of deaths, the more the media covers it, the more the media covers it, the more people watch the news to see what’s happening—well, except us because we avoided it on purpose—”

  “And it was almost a disaster,” she interrupted.

  “Yeah… Anyway, the more people who watch the news, the more money they make from advertising revenue. The more money they make from advertising supports—I haven’t figured that part out yet. It probably just goes into their pockets.”

  “Okay, sure, I can sort of see that if you’re in full-on conspiracy mode.”

  “Like I said, I don’t believe that the Crud is fake, but what if it’s being blown out of proportion? I mean those Rationing Bureau people—”

  “Rationing Board. They called themselves the Rationing Board.”

  “Okay. Same difference.”

  “I just want your conspiracy to have some facts to it,” she winked.

  “The Rationing Board people didn’t seem concerned with the Crud. They weren’t wearing masks and they were sure as hell within the six-foot minimum distance. What if there was a vaccine for government workers, or for citizens, or whatever?”

  “A vaccine?”

  “Yeah. A vaccine or a cure, I don’t know. But something that makes the Crud no more problematic than the cold or something like that. They used the Crud as a cover to expand their powers, and we’ve all walked into it with our eyes wide open, believing the government had our best interests at heart, when all it really is, is a power grab?”

  She waved a hand around in a circle. “All of that stuff you just spouted off could have been summed up in that last paragraph. You almost lost me with all that talk of false reporting and the money involved, but by saying it isn’t as severe and it’s a power grab, that’s plausible—hell, that’s factual. Or at least the power grab part, the part about it not being so severe isn’t a stretch when combined with the fact that there are armed government stooges running around making sure people—Americans—don’t have too much food stored up.”

  “I doubt it’s just food,” I replied. “Remember that story a few months ago about the raids all across the country on people’s private stocks of PPE and sanitizer?”

  “Those weren’t private stocks,” she scoffed. “Those were people who were planning on using a crisis to get rich.”

  “Maybe. But isn’t that what America is all about? Supply and demand? I mean capitalism is about earning the maximum amount of profit for goods or services that people are willing to pay, so if somebody is willing to drop twenty bucks on a two-dollar bottle of hand sanitizer, the seller is happy that they earned a profit and the consumer is happy that they have the product, right?”

  “Eh, slippery slope,” Cassandra said. “We certainly went into lockdown without much hesitation this time around.”

  “Right? I think the government has taken that slope away and replaced it with a wall. Or at least they’re trying to. All of these programs they’re forcing on everyone if they want to get food for their family, making everyone register with biometric data, only allowing citizens out of quarantine… They’re lining us up against the wall and forcing us to do exactly what they say.”

  “The government making all house payments and paying the bills if a person is out of work because of the quarantine. Maybe you’re on to something, Bodhi. I don’t like admitting that this hair-brained idea may have a grain of truth to it, but it’s not that far-fetched given what we’ve seen from the government over the past couple of weeks.”

  “And we’ve had our heads down since Kelley and Alex were murdered—where’d that video we sent my dad go? That got suppressed,” I said as an aside. “We haven’t really been paying too much attention to the outside world since that happened. What else has been going on that we don’t know about?”

  “Hmm… That’s a lot to think about, babe,” Cassandra said after a moment of thought.

  “Right? It’s bullshit.”

  I wanted to slam my phone down on the nightstand, but set it down gently instead. I didn’t have a way to repair the damage if I broke the stupid thing, so best to be careful and not allow my frustration to get the best of me.

  “I’m going to bed,” I grumbled.

  “It’s only 9:45,” Cassandra replied.

  “I’m tired. It’s been a long day and I just kind of want to put an end to it, y’know?”

  “I’m gonna read for a bit longer. This is a really good—Oh! Sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” I said, turning into her and throwing an arm over her stomach. “You didn’t unpublish a century worth of books because they didn’t line up with your political ideas."

  We were woken in the middle night, once again, to the sound of gunfire outside followed by the sounds of sirens. It was common enough to hear them all night long, but rare that they were directly outside of our apartment. The wails of the sirens ended when they pulled up, replaced by the idling of heavy engines. Our blinds alternated between red and blue as the lights continued.

  “What’s going on?” Cassandra asked sleepily.

  “I don’t know. Let me see.”

  I rolled out of bed and crept along the floor to the window. Sitting down cross-legged, I reached up to grasp the cord on the blinds. I lifted the bottom on the blinds up an inch or two slowly. I thought looking through that gap would be much more discreet than trying to peek through one slat at head level. Plus, there was the potential that I’d lose my balance and bring the whole damn thing down when I tried to stop myself from falling.

  Outside, there was a fire truck, an ambulance, and two police cars. They’d pulled up alongside two blacked-out SUVs that looked similar to what the Rationing Board fucks had driven. I narrated what I saw to Cassandra, who was still in bed.

  “The paramedics are standing on the sidewalk with a stretcher. Police guys ran toward the front of the apartment building with their weapons drawn. None of them in masks.” I added that last part as further evidence that the Crud was crap. If first responders weren’t worried about it, then the severity of it had to be fake.

  “You see where they went?”

  “No,” I replied. “Just toward the front of the building, toward the stairs.” Our apartment building had several sets of stairs to each level that fed out onto a suspended concrete walkway. Each apartment took up the width of the building, which meant there wasn’t a creepy hallway with doors on either side, just the balcony walkway the entire length, open side toward the parking lot. There was a tiny six-by-twelve window up high in the kitchen that I could have maneuvered a chair under to get a look out front, but if whatever was going on wasn’t happening directly in view of that window, then it would be pointless.

  I waited a minute, answering Cassandra’s questions until she finally just came down on the floor with me. She scooted backward until she was sitting on my lap and leaned her back into my chest. The warmth of her body flooded through me as we watched the unchanging scene below.

  My knees were killing me from the pressure of Cassandra’s weight when the parame
dics ran with the stretcher out of our line of sight. She leaned forward to get a better view and I took the opportunity to straighten my legs out. The sensation of pins and needles flooded through my feet and I sighed at the relief on my joints as her body eased over to the window.

  A police officer appeared, holding a hand to his face as he walked. He took his hand away to look at it, revealing a dark smear on his cheek. “Looks like blood,” Cassandra stated.

  I didn’t reply because more action was happening below. Three more officers came around, two of them dragging an unconscious man in handcuffs. The third walked behind a woman and two small children. I was positive that I’d never seen them before, but that didn’t mean much since my hours had been so sporadic for classes that I just stayed on campus all day before all of this happened.

  “You know them?” I whispered, paranoid that the police outside would hear me talking through the closed window.

  “No. Don’t think I’ve seen them before. It’s a big complex though, so who knows which building they came from.”

  We watched as the man was thrown roughly into one vehicle while the woman was placed into the back of the second one with her kids. Soon enough, the paramedics returned. A male was on the stretcher, shirt and—was that a black suit?—cut open to reveal pale white skin. He had a knife handle sticking out of his chest. Bandages and tape secured it in place so it wouldn’t get jostled while they transported him to the hospital. One of the paramedics squeezed an oxygen bag as they ran, forcing air into his lungs.

  “Looks like somebody didn’t take too kindly to a late-night visit,” I said, pointing over Cassandra’s shoulder.

  “He’s pretty far away,” she replied. “But I think that may be the guy who was in here today with the woman. She did most of the talking, but I got a good enough view of him that I’d recognize him if we were in the same room.”

  “That’s kind of what I was thinking. Maybe not the same crew, but guys from the Rationing Board. Black suits are common enough, but not at 3 a.m.”

  We watched as the ambulance left in a hurry and then a pair of soldiers appeared from around the front of the building. Each of them held the foot of a body. They dragged it toward the street. It was the body of a male. Dark skin, curly hair. I recognized him.